that doesn't mean all solutions are local
I'm not so sure. The idea of the global village is a good one, but I'm not sure that Marshall McLuhan's ideal has been fulfilled. Just look at how most Americans get their "news" by TV, and how little of it is actually devoted to what is actually happening in different countries. The mass media of choice in America is certainly the TV and it has had a "dumbing down" effect on its audience, who resembles a Roman audience looking to be titillated by ever gorier displays of violent gladitorial excess. Sometimes I think that the more appropriate model is the "village idiot" than the "global village" and that the entertainment function of the mass media far outstrips its informative function. Now that I have recently become a father, I am seriously questioning what TV does to young brains.
I am very grateful that the Vietnam War and the resulting convulsions of the late sixties gave me an opportunity and incentive to see the world, including the splendors of Islam in such places as the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, The Blue Mosque in Istanbul, the Jama Masjid in Delhi and the Taj Mahal in Agra. It is difficult for me (a nonpractising Jew) to listen to the beautiful voice of a muezzin calling the faithful to prayer and to resist the humble impulse to kneel down before God in solemn prayer. Later, at Harvard, I was afforded the luxury of studying Urdu, of attending seminars on Indo-Muslim culture, classes in comparative religion at Harvard Divinity School, and seminars on "The Human and Social Costs of Economic Development", while pursuing a degree in economics with an emphasis on Indian economic development. I had once hoped to make my life's work in India, but ultimately decided that India would be better off without the additional "foreign intervention" no matter how well meaning it was.
As wonderful as the internet is, and I had previously used CW-DX ham radio in the early 60s as a means of vicarious travel since I was thirteen, I believe the best means of attaining the keys to the global village is through educational travel. Books are nice, but there are certain truths that cannot be apprehended second-hand. They must be seen and experienced, preferably before we have too much cultural baggage. I'll certainly read Bernard Lewis but would rather arrive at my own truths through my own contacts and interpersonal relationships and experiences.
I am not sure I fully understand your analogy between the War on Drugs and the War on Terrorism, even though the word "assassin" is cognate with the Arabic word "hashish", see silent-arrows.com
Other than the legitimate religious use of drugs as a means of transcendental experience or to attempt to "cleanse the doors of perception", I think that people mostly abuse drugs in trying to avoid reality, or more specifically, anxiety. I do not believe that Islamic terrorism fits this description. The jihad spirit of the holy warrior is not primarily seeking an escape from reality. The young Palestinian bus bombers in Israel are easily recruited among a Palestinian population that has been traumatized by an excess of bloodshed and the sure knowledge that life is struggle anyway. Young people have a natural tendency to want their lives to matter, to have a cause to live (or die) for. Mohammad Atta was a serious engineer, not a drug user.
Islam has always had some elements of a theology of the oppressed, with its ideas of radical equality. It comes as no surprise to me that the convulsions of the modern world should produce fundamentalist longings for "purity". It's not really so different than the Nazi idealogy that bred in the slums of Berlin in the early thirties. But who is to say that someone else's ideology is like a drug?
I agree with what you said about Japan, a rare case of successful cultural adaptation with elements of identification with the aggressor and mixed admiration and hatred for Commodore Perry and what he represented. Asians tend to emulate. Why these days does Islam seem to brood instead of moving forward? As you correctly point out, it has not always been that way. |
